


Painting a Portrait

by Fey_Nikola



Series: Ezio Auditore; Assassin, Mentor, Man [1]
Category: Assassin's Creed
Genre: Gen, Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-27
Updated: 2012-02-27
Packaged: 2017-10-31 20:17:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/347971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fey_Nikola/pseuds/Fey_Nikola
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Where did the paintings in Ezio's room at Monteriggioni come from? Why does no one ever talk about them?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Painting a Portrait

**Author's Note:**

> Another AssCreed kink meme fill. This is the first in a series that will focus around Ezio and what goes on in his head.

\-----

The first one, of Alberti, he’d started painting four months after the assassination. When Uncle Mario had told him to stay and learn to fight after he, Claudia and their mother fled Firenze, he’d thought it would take maybe two or three months until he could wield a sword efficiently enough to defend his remaining family on the trip to Spain. He’d always been physical, and the footwork came easily to him. But he was angry, so angry all the time, and his concentration suffered for it.

Late in the night, he would sometimes pull out the battered letter he’d taken from Alberti’s wallet. _I betrayed Giovanni… They offered me money, land and title… looking back, I see no other way..._

He wished he could kill Alberti again.

_I betrayed Giovanni…_

Alberti was his father’s friend - the Gonfaloniere - a lawyer reputed to fight for what was right and just. And then this great man sold his soul for… for what? Murdered his family for reasons unknown.

_They offered me money, land and title…_

Alberti’s words haunted him; the memory of his face in death brought no comfort, only more hate and rage. He’d been tempted so many times to burn the letter, to track down Alberti’s wife and children, to many unspeakable things.

_I see no other way…_

And the man’s face haunted him, night after night. Traitor. Murderer. Monster.

_Him, or me?_

Sleep was hard to come by, nothing but nameless terrors in the night. He got rid of his bed, hoping to avoid sleeping altogether. Claudia worried about him, and mother had become a lifeless shell.

_…no other way…_

He found the canvas while trying to clean out the old galleria; physical labor to keep his mind busy and the rage at bay for a time. When he asked his uncle what he wanted done with it, Mario waved him off and told him to do with it what he would.

He’d thought that he would sketch some flowers, or perhaps their home in Firenze to cheer Claudia. He’d been given some minor tutoring in the arts when he was young, like any good nobleman’s son. He knew he was fair enough with a piece of charcoal, though he’d never had the patience for painting.

So, needing the distraction, he set aside one evening and collected a bowl of wildflowers from outside the walls. When he began to sketch, however, the curves of the stems resolved themselves into shoulders and rounded cheeks. The centers and petals appeared more like eyes and the forms of a face. It was a faint bowl of wildflowers, and an accurate enough sketch for an amateur. But under that, or perhaps behind or within, Umberto Alberti’s face waited. Watched.

He tossed the flowers out a window, broke the bowl and buried the pieces in the garden. He locked the canvas in a chest and did not look at it again for a week.

He was distracted and irritable, jumping at shadows and snapping at anyone who tried to engage him in conversation. He learned later that Claudia had appealed to Mario to intervene; frightened, desperate and in tears. His uncle had been hoping that he could work through this malaise on his own, and the confrontation was loud and awkward. Two days after they had both calmed, his uncle gave a suggestion that he should find an outlet of some kind that was not his family or the condottieri.

It took him an age before he could bring himself to unlock the chest. Another before he could take it out. A third before he began to sketch again, but once he started he could not stop.

The lines were dark, harsh and thick at the beginning, but as he began to outline the shading, include intricacies in the clothing and skin it grew easier. He finished the basics in one long session, refusing to stop. His entire body ached when he was done, but he felt so much lighter.

He wrote to Leonardo, the only painter he knew he could trust, for advice on the paints themselves. The response took weeks, but he knew of Leonardo’s reputation. During that time he applied himself to the training regimen his uncle had suggested, and Claudia remarked on his improved temperament. He began visiting his mother, and took her on walks through the garden every few days. Sometimes she would give him a vague smile, and it gave him hope.

When Leonardo’s letter finally arrived, he’d already gotten his sketch as close to perfection as he could possibly manage. The pages of cramped writing were filled with valuable advice, most of which he never would’ve guessed at. After giving it a day’s thought, he decided to take Leonardo’s advice to use oils, and sent out orders for the materials.

Over the next four months, he struggled with the painting; sometimes devoting an entire evening, and others only managing a brushstroke or two before he had to leave the villa entirely and race across the rooftops or ride a horse hard through the countryside. At times he would force himself to sit and paint for an hour, but he always found such work to be sub-par, and would usually have to redo it.

As the shading was being finished, he found himself willing to dedicate more and more time. The frame was ordered and arrived two days before the last brushstroke was applied. He framed it himself and as the final touch he carved into the back with the edge of his father’s hidden blade the words which had haunted him the most.

He hung it on the wall of his bedroom, and it remained there as a reminder of what he had done. Afterward, when he could spare the time to stay in the villa, it reminded him of what he had yet to do. The others eventually accumulated; each a member of the conspiracy that had killed his family. Each helping to bring him a little more peace, and to lessen the rage.

Each one a reminder of what he could become.

_I see no other way…_

“Thank you Ezio, for not forgetting about me.” Each a reminder of what he had to protect.


End file.
